The Forces Impacting Our People and Our Cities

At no point in our history have humans been called to be more curious, empathetic, communal, and adaptive.

This is due to several interconnected forces happening around us simultaneously. Globally.

Technological forces:
- Compute costs continue to fall,
- increasing global connectivity as everything moves to the cloud.
- Even we humans are moving to the cloud, as we live our lives more online than in built spaces.
- We scroll rather than stroll.
- And the social fabric continues to fray.

Social forces:
- online social ‘relationships’ are increasing even as real-life connections and community depth decrease.
- Leading to increasing distrust of institutions even as personal happiness declines.
- And so we seek ‘gods’ in the form of humans doing seemingly extraordinary things (Mr. Beast! Patient Zero!).
- And fracture into tribes. Even as we further distrust our institutions.

Demographic/psychographic forces:
- our tribes are increasingly based on our age (Boomers vs Gen Z) or
- online affiliations (Phony Stark haters vs Musketeers. See ‘gods’ point above).
- the wealthy cluster and hunker away and the have-nots cluster in their tribes.
- The tribalism will power economic forces.

Economic forces:
- we are witnessing the ‘Barbell’ effect of stupendously large (Trillion dollar companies!!!) global firms on one end and stupendously wealthy individuals/experts ($500M baseball contracts!!! Billionaire Class!!!) on the other.
- The middle bar will consist of the rest of the planet who continue to sense that ‘things are not equal’.
- This will create friction in resource desire and utilization.

Resources:
- the wealthy (individuals, nations, companies) want more.
- The poor and the middle also want more.
- This increased draw on resources will continue to impact our planet and foster continued distrust of other ‘tribes’ who ‘want what we want’.
- And we will see more physical migration due to resource needs and tough economic ‘climates’.

These forces are interconnected. Read everything above in any order and it still makes sense. It also doesn't have to be negatively framed.

Consequently, our individual actions, choices, behaviors, and commitments can ensure that the spiral caused by these forces isn’t downwardly negative but upwardly positive. For all our sakes. 

At no point in our history have humans been called to be more curious, empathetic, communal, and adaptive.